Videos reveal a new horror for Syrian civilians: cluster bombs

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The videos leave little room for doubt: they show cluster bombs lying on dusty ground next to buildings, or stuck nose first in the earth. All around are dozens of the unexploded bomblets that they released in mid-air and scattered over areas larger than football pitches. Adults, even young children, are picking up the bomblets, seemingly unaware that they could explode at any moment.

Syria’s regime has shown little reluctance to slaughter its own people, or to destroy great swaths of its own cities, in order to cling to power. These 18 videos, posted on the internet by opposition activists last week, provide seemingly incontrovertible proof of a fresh depravity — its willingness to use a particularly deadly and indiscriminate form of weaponry against its own population, one that is designed to kill and maim as many people as possible, and which 111 of the world’s nations have agreed to ban. Syria is not among them.

The regime has been accused of using cluster bombs earlier in the uprising, but the evidence has seldom been as clear cut. “If we need any further proof of the Syrian Government’s complete disregard for the lives of its own citizens and its own children, here it is,” said Philippe Bolopion, UN Director of Human Rights Watch (HRW).

Over the past few days planes and helicopters have dropped the cluster bombs in large numbers on at least eight towns in the mutinous provinces of Idlib, Homs, Aleppo and Lattakia, HRW claimed. Many fell near Maarat al-Numan, a strategically vital town that straddles the highway from Damascus to Aleppo and was seized by the rebel Free Syrian Army last week.

A resident of Tamane in Idlib province said that last Tuesday a low-flying helicopter “released a bomb that split in half and released smaller [bomblets]” and that it “split open between two schools, intermediate and elementary, very close to each other”. The resident went on: “The [bomblets] that exploded were the ones that hit the ground on the tip; we collected the ones that didn’t explode.”

The cluster bombs are Soviet-made RBK-250s filled with AO-1SCh fragmentation bomblets. Moscow has long been one of Syria’s main arms suppliers, and there is no evidence to suggest that Russia has provided them since the uprising began 19 months ago. However, their apparent age merely adds to the danger because older bomblets are less likely to explode on impact and more likely to be picked up for disposal or as souvenirs. They can remain volatile for decades and are notoriously hard to find and remove when conflicts end.

“The cluster munition strikes and unexploded ordnance they leave behind pose a huge danger to civilian populations, who often seem unaware how easily these sub-munitions could still explode,” Steve Goose, HRW’s arms director, said. One video shows a child no older than 3 or 4 apparently playing with a bomblet in a house.

Cluster bombs are considered such a threat to civilian populations that 77 countries have ratified the Convention on Cluster Munitions that bans their use. Another 34 countries have signed the convention but not yet ratified it. Syria and its supporters, Russia and China, are not signatories. Nor is the United States.

Hostility between Damascus and Ankara continued to mount over the weekend, with Turkey banning all Syrian civilian flights from its airspace yesterday after Syria banned Turkish flights on Saturday.

Syria was retaliating after Turkey intercepted a Syrian Air flight from Moscow to Damascus last week, forced it to land and confiscated what it claimed was military equipment found on board.

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A scene from one of the internet videos that shows unexploded bomblets

2012-10-15 00:02:53.814

A scene from one of the internet videos that shows unexploded bomblets